Trip to Tuscany, Italy part 2

We proceeded to the other famous wine township called Montepulciano.

▲ The boutique winery was near the road

▲The boutique winery was near the road

We got into the city-state called Montepulciano. The average ascent was 6% kilometers for riding.

The word "Montepulciano" was so long and I was wondering how to spell it.
The design styles were really different within these brick houses.

The sunlight in the early morning shone in the earth.
It shone the place where we stayed for these five days.

Scenery near the lake.

Perugia is the biggest capital in Umbria.
Today we were going to visit the capital called Perugia and the other city called Assisi in Perugia Province.
The old and new zones in Perugia are divided into two worlds.
We visited the fascinating old zone.

If being on the mountainside and would like to get into the city, we needed to take five escalators.
There were still some stairs on the way and in the end, we climbed and walked through some ancient and
dark flagging in the alley whose distance was about several hundred meters.

We came to Perugia where it is also a mountain city.
There were endless idyllic sceneries and houses under the mountains.

▲ Palazzo dei Priori was built in 1303 and it is one of the iconic buildings in Perugia
Now the building of Palazzo dei Priori is used by Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria.

After staying for a while, let's proceed to Assisi steeped in religion!
Assisi is a famous consecrated Catholic ground and it is a birthplace of Francis of Assisi. He founded Franciscan here in 1208.

▲ The streetscapes in Assisi

Here was Piazza del Comune and it is the residents' living center in Assisi.
In addition, we visited the most famous Temple of Minerva in front of the piazza.

▲ The fountain in front of Piazza del Comune

▲ City Hall (the left tower) and The Temple of Minerva

Poppies near the road which I saw before were beautiful and unique.
But I couldn't sure whether they could be refined as drugs.

Here was the lovely place today.

▲ The abundant breakfast this morning!

Today we were going to visit Pienza.
Here was a section of sp88 road near Pienza—Monticchiello.
It is called Cypress Road.
The upright cypresses on the way stood next to the winding road.
The high and low rolling hills.
It showed idyllic scenery whose colors were different green.
Vineyards, olive gardens were interspersed there by setting off red brick houses.
The perfect combination between the civilization and nature.
These sceneries proved human can definitely live with absolutely beautiful natural environment!

Tuscany is the wonderful place to ride bikes.
You could often ride a bike even if riding every day.
I could promise you could also ride happily like them even if your ages were the same as them.

▲ This was a slap-up electric bike

Montepulciano, Montacino, Pienza.
The three cities, Montepulciano , Montacino and Pienza, are all famous wine producing areas.
Wine shops are all over the city.

We bought a bottle of wine in the winery and started to tasting wine today.

These were sceneries in the three cities.

Two of us rode bikes.
Mr. and Mrs. Cao rented a car.

They went traveling by car at ordinary times.
Two of us rode bikes everywhere.
Four of us went traveling by car together when the weather was bad.

Two of us rode and two of them drove.
We traveled separately.

Today we didn't have any clear destination.
Just randomly rode our bikes around.
Rode bikes lightheartedly in the country.

We looked into the distance of the destination on the top of the hill.
Rode up the road industriously!
This was just bitter and sweet atmosphere that you could experience by riding a bike in Tuscany.

▲ This was the sandwich for lunch next to the road

▲ The rest time next to the road on my way.

It was 2 p.m. and we had just rode over a climbing roadway that was about 12 kilometers.
The average ascent was about 7%.
It was pretty hard!
We took a rest in a small town of the half mountain.

The whole piazza seemed like the world for two of us during the noon break.

The whole piazza seemed like the world for two of us during the noon break.